


as if crouching, springs

by b10f3m4l3



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Trans Female Character, inspired by chromesthesia's "even midwinter, its sofie baby!, they bloom", trans sofie au, tw f slur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27546664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b10f3m4l3/pseuds/b10f3m4l3
Summary: we all go through formative moments in our lives, whether we see them or not.they are where we are built, from our fundamentals.sofia bikes was not born sofia bikes.sofia bikes was born a little girl who everyone thought was a boy.sofia bikes was born on staten island with an angry father and a mother who loved her unconditionally.
Relationships: sofia bicicleta & maria bicicleta
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	as if crouching, springs

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! this is (hopefully) ongoing writing project i hope to continue until done, and im hoping to explore a range of different themes, from gender to parenthood to culture to motherhood through ms sofie bikes <33 This is quite heavily inspired by Eren Chromathesia's Sophie Baek Au + "Even Midwinter, They Bloom" (which.. ilike.. read it!!)  
>  _(throughout the fic i refer to a woman, girl or otherwise unnamed feminine person who other characters refer to as a boy named marco- this is sofia) ___

In the year 1991, on Staten Island in the unbearable heat of summer, a little girl sat in front of her parents' mirror. She counted the freckles on her face, one, two, three… and oh so many more, more than she could dream. She drew her finger along her jaw, taking note of the softness of her skin and dark brown hair that floated down in a shaggy mess from her head. The overbearing sun drifted in through the windows, harsh on the poor girl’s eyes. She could smell the soap from the fresh white linen on her parents bed, and the radio warbled distantly, in the kitchen. A vase of twisting, curling, pure white baby’s breath sat by the bedside. She squished her tummy through a faded hulk t-shirt and scrunched up her brow in thought.

“Ma?” she suddenly called out to the cream-carpeted rooms behind her, the sound of her voice echoing through a tranquil home, bouncing off eggshell walls and hardwood kitchen floors. Footfalls could be heard bounding up to the room in which she was sat, soft, small, but noticeable in the silence of her brothers’ absence.

A woman popped her head round the doorway, smiling in a way that was both a soft close-lipped grin but also the largest, warmest ear-to-ear beam anyone had ever smiled. It was Mom. Mrs Bicicletta. Ma. She was wearing a white turtleneck, fluffy and soft and new and good for cuddles when the little girl had nightmares at 11pm and Mommy and Daddy were still watching TV. From her head hung down long, dark hair, framing a face that was neither youthful nor old, but at a comfy place in-between, and Mom's eyes… Mom's eyes were a deep brown, deeper and darker than even her daughter's, beautiful and entrancing, soft and warm like an all-encompassing hug. She and her daughter shared such a great resemblance that if the little girl had been about 22 years older, they could have been sisters.

“Yes, Marco?” Mom smiled, walking over to the little girl, coming to kneel beside her, “What question has that curious mind got to offer me now?”. Mom booped her on the nose, like a cat. Mom spoke softly, but not like she spoke when dad was home (small, constrained sentences), but instead like when it was just the little girl and her Ma alone in the house, when Mom’s soft voice spoke a little looser, a little happier.

“Did you _really_ carry me in your tummy for nine months? How did I fit?” the little girl asked, enquiry and curiosity so strong in her eyes, a stare so intense it made her mother chuckle.

Mom leaned forward and squeezed the little girl's shoulders, a smile soft on her face. 

“You were much, _much_ smaller back then, baby. Small enough to fit in my arms,” Ma said, stroking her daughter’s cheek, echoing the way the little girl drew her fingers across her own jaw, punctuating her sentence, “And besides, I am a _very_ strong mommy.”

Ma did a pose, one that the little girl saw in movies and tv when strong men would show off their muscles. She didn’t have muscles to show off though, not on the outside, but the little girl knew with all her heart that her mommy was definitely the strongest person in the world, so she must have had some strong muscles on the inside. 

The little girl reached up with a small hand and tucked her mother’s hair behind her ear, causing another smile to alight on her face. When it was just them, alone in the house, happiness was an everpresent companion. Calm silence filled the air for almost a minute, until the little girl broke it with another musing.

“I hope I’m strong like you one day, Ma…” the little girl said, suddenly intently staring at the mirror, knuckles white as bone as she clutched her shirt with a vice-like grip.

“Why’s that?”

The little girl looked in the mirror, not at her own reflection now, but at the reflection of the older woman kneeling beside her. Her mother was a beautiful loving presence, kindness and strength radiated off her like warmth off the sun. The girl looked at how the light danced in her long hair, how her bitten nails were coated with a matte nail polish that matched her skin. How her clothes fit so gently around her form and how she now looked down upon her daughter, inquiry on her face in a way that was so similar to the way the little girl would stare right up at her mother when curious. 

“So that when I have a baby in my tummy, it grows as big and strong as I did!!!”

The little girl's mother stared, shocked, at her daughter, attempting to suppress a grin that overcame her lips like a wave erupting over shore and, much like a wave, growing and developing and gathering water until she was overcome with a tsunami of laughter, covering her mouth with one hand as she took breaths as a way to calm herself before trying to talk to her child, who was sat now confused before her.

“Baby, I-I didn’t know _that_ was what you were talking about,” Mom wiped her eyes, which had teared up ever so slightly, “You can’t have a baby in your tummy, only mommies can have one of those…”

Clouds, drifting across the sky, gently closed over the sun outside, and the light filtering into the room was replaced by a shadow, overcast and despondent.

“That's what I’m gonna be when I grow up.. A mommy…”

Ma looked down at her daughter, looking up slightly to see rain pitter-pattering against the window, and back down to see similar looking tears beading at her own daughter’s eyes.

“Oh.. Marco… Only girls can be mommies, I’m sorry. Boys can be daddies, though, if you want that instead.”

The little girl did **not** want that. Why could only _girls_ be mommies? She didn’t want to be a _dad_ , dads were gross and boring and smelt like pasta and cheap beer. Mommies were kind and loving and would buy you my-little-mermaid pillowcases when you went to the store. It wasn’t fair. It wasn't fair! The tears began surging forward, like whitewater rivers running down her face. It wasn't fair!!!!!

Mom wiped the now-streaming tears from her child’s face with a tissue, the rain picking up in frequency and pounded at the window with immense force as she took the little girl by the hand, and drew her further into the house, as a wail built in her throat and tears ran faster and faster and faster down chubby cheeks, staining her oh-so-treasured hulk shirt.

The rain slammed into the window, the room now empty, and the world was no longer simple and calm and noiseless, thunder and shrieking wind now shook the house at its foundation, the sky darkening with clouds that loomed angrily and a storm flashing with lightning. The thunder rumbled once more, loud and clear and earth-shaking. Seconds passed.

_one_

_two_

_three_

**_FLASH!_ **

* * *

It was 1994. The little girl burst through the front door, her face red and wet with tears and rain. She was taller now, not-so-little-anymore. Her hair-though now plastered by the wet to her clothes- hung long down to her shoulder blades, always carefully brushed. She had discarded the hulk shirts and childish implications of motherhood, utterly convinced she was a prim and proper and very grown-up fifth-grader. Though, this was not the appearance she gave off now, as she trampled through the Bicicleta home in sodden clothes, wailing despondently, sobbing as she wrapped her arms around her surprised mother’s waist.

She had broken a scene of serenity, where the house was still for once, and her mother had sat down as the kitchen aisle, deep in thought. A steaming cup of green tea in a cup only her mother drank from stood undrunk on the faux-marble of the kitchen counter and, though now swept away by violent gusts of wind from the door, the home had been warm, comfortable. A single daisy stood wilted in a clear vase by the window.

“-Marco..” Maria Bicicleta was...shocked. The not-so-little-anymore girl recently had fallen away from being a fan of cuddles, erring away from touch as she aged, as if she had begun to resent it. Maria sighed as she looked back upon the narrow hallway her daughter had just trampled down, which was covered in dripping water and muddy shoeprints splattered on the hardwood. No doubtedly she’d be the one who had to tidy that up, all her husband did was drink and watch tv, he wouldn’t know a mop if she whacked him over the head with one.

As if she had summoned him with her thoughts, her husband, Tony, walked belatedly through the door in chase of the not-so-little-anymore girl, yelling as he slammed the door violently behind him.

“Listen, Marco! Be a goddamn man for once an’ tell yer’ father wha-” He stopped, seeing his daughter sob heavily into Maria’s chest, and tsked as he grumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like “ _you’re babying him too much, he's gonna turn out funny.”_

Maria slowly rubbed her angel’s back in comfort, sparking slightly with anger. Who was Tony to shout at _her_ child. As if he raised them?

Shooting an unseen glare at her husband, (was it really unseen? Or did he simply not care for her opinion?) Maria ran her hand through her daughter's soft long hair, humming to her gently.

“My dear son, what.. Why.. my dear.” She couldn’t find the right words. What do you do when the thing you love most in the world is crying, wailing right in front of you? She heard Tony’s angry shuffling, banging doors around in an all-too-common rage, and felt her daughter fearfully flinch in reaction. It made her grip all the more tight.

Leaning down slightly, Maria sh-sh-shhh-ed her daughter reassuringly, bringing her hands up to wipe wet strands of hair from their position plastered to her baby’s forehead, tucking them gently behind her ears. Maria cupped her daughter’s face in her hands, ( _god-he looks so beautiful-_ , she thought to herself, _my dearest_ ) and she counted the spray of freckles that decorated her cheeks, the only resemblance to Tony’s visage that her daughter ever bore, softly kissing her where those same freckles met, at the bridge of her nose.

The not-so-little-anymore girl had stopped crying now, though she still sniffled and her bottom lip stuck out like a dinnerplate, she kept looking to the side, antsy and jumpy in a way she never usually was. 

Maria whispered in her daughter’s ear, quietly so her father wouldn’t know she was being “coddled”.

“My little boy… What’s happened?”

The not-so-little-anymore girl was suddenly blushing red -embarrassed by her vulnerability ( _why was he embarrassed_ , maria thought. _someone so young should not hold such shame on his shoulders_ )- and she wiped her damp cheeks with the back of her palm. 

“A boy at school.” She said, as if it explained her tears slick on her cheeks, the agony upon her face, her nervous eyes that flitted over her shoulder.

Maria’s brow furrowed further. She could hear Tony stomping upstairs, loud like the thunder that was sure to come of the howling storms outside, no doubt to scream at the kids, who had been sitting up there reading calmly. She wished he wouldn't rile them up, they were only kids, most were barely a third his age, it was pathetic.

“A boy at school did what, my baby?” Maria prays that her whispers come off as loving. She loves the not-so-little-anymore girl so so much.

Maria watched with widening eyes as her daughter pulled slightly on the collar of her shirt, revealing the blooming purple of bruises splashing across her clavicle, colourful and cloudy like foxglove petals, nebulae of browns and yellows and violets and blues arcing like a jagged necklace of kalmias decorating her skin. Maria drew breath sharply, very slowly bringing trembling fingers to meet discoloured collarbones. She stepped towards her child, away from the counter, struck with a feeling of intense panic.

“Who….”

“A boy at school, like I said. He pulled my hair too… _real_ hard. An’ he called me something but I don’t know what it means,” The not-so-little-anymore girl was looking away, but Maria could tell she was crying, her face was creased slightly with embarrassment, “I don’t think even he knew what it meant either…”

Maria shakily drew in breath, processing that she now inhaled in a world where the worst possible thing to ever happen had happened; someone had attacked her child, her daughter, her everything-and-more. She held tight onto her daughter’s forearm, a simple gesture of reassurance, but she wasn’t sure which of them needed the reassurance more. ( _who could even… what horrible monster could hit my.. my perfect son,_ her mind raced) 

The not-so-little-anymore girl looked up into her mother’s eyes with an oh-so familiar curiosity, so familiar that Maria was almost transported back to the past, when such a curiosity was just a small bit more common-when the world was new in her daughter's eyes.

“What is it, anyway, what he called me?” The not-so-little-anymore girl asked, looking into her mothers eyes and seeing only confusion as it dawned upon her that she had never actually said the word aloud, “Y’know, a “faggot”?”

Maria could hear Tony bounding down the stairs as her eyes opened wide with shock. He had definitely heard that. He was mere steps away, his work-boots bashing hard on the wooden floor as he thumped his way across the hall, shaking the ornaments and slamming his feet like a raging bull stomping before it charges. 

_Three steps away._

Maria leaned down and whispered once more in her daughter's ear.

“I’ll tell you later,” she whispered apologetically, grabbing a colourful packet of the not-so-little-anymore girl’s favorite snack from the counter in a desperate attempt to sweeten what she was about to request next,

_Two steps away_

Maria leant down again and kissed her daughter’s cheek, “Go to your room, dry your hair, off you go, quickly Marco, please”. She was so aware of her husband's presence just metres away. Tall and broad and strong… and angry.

As the not-so-little-anymore girl scurried past her father in the narrow hall, Maria watched as if in slow motion, he reached out to grapple her wrist. In a split second, faster than anyone had done anything ever (or at least it felt like that), Maria swept her arm over the counter, knocking the cup of green tea (in the special cup only she would drink from) onto the cold blue kitchen tiles, where white ceramic shattered into a billion pieces-each smaller than the head of a pin- with a crash loud enough to distract Tony for the split second her daughter needed to slip past him and sprint up the stairs.

_ One step away _

“What the FUCK Maria? What was that I just heard? And also how could you be so fuckin’ carele-” Tony’s angry yelling blended into the background as Maria heard the stairs creak in turn, her daughter dashing up them. She heard a  _ creaaak _ as her bedroom door opened, and a corresponding  _ creaaaak _ as it started to close.

_ No more steps. He’s here. _

Maria Bicicleta looked stonily at her husband's face. His cheeks were red from yelling, stubble pushing through his face and covering it with a layer of bristles. The light gleamed off unwashed hair, snarling lips, a furrowed brow, casting shadows over his face that exaggerated his rage-filled features. He had been quite mediocre-handsome when they first met. Anger had made him ugly. 

Her daughter’s door upstairs closed with a bang.


End file.
